First Warmoth Guitar - Butterscotch 52 Telecaster Project

[Shellcaster]

BTW, this is Mr. Lexi ang his Lexicaster
View attachment 68556

That's awesome! Both one of a kind gems for sure. One thing I didn't notice in this thread is that not was there wide variation and experimenting with finishing techniques but with body wood those early years of the broadcaster/Esquire/telecaster as they started out as white pine then swamp ash then alder if I remember right so the only "correct blonde finish" is the one you like best. Enjoy! Every guitar was a story and few so precious...I love going through here and seeing all the beautiful creations everyone has made but this has to be one of the most special!

 

[Shellcaster]

Oh, and if I remember right the reason the routes are so shallow on the vintage bodies is because vintage fenders had really shallow routes for various reasons... As well as the neck pockets being a super tight fit not for just stability but it's way easier to sand a few thousands of a millimeter off to make the perfect fit than make a shim a few thousands of a millimeter thick if there's a tiny gap

 

[Dolores]

This is one that actually stayed in Mt. Doom...........................and is getting reworked currently (Disclaimer Spud reserves the right to make changes to the specs of current or former models without notification)View attachment 67955

Love it!

Back to my house and my entertaining room, leaving the "old russian style" room
View attachment 68549
Finish the polishing process, and waiting to drill the holes (the plate has been reversed by my mistake).
View attachment 68550
Installing the pick up, and acting like an esquire ( my room was to chaos on that time, cannot find the black guard)
View attachment 68551

the string must be 1046
View attachment 68552

Finish!
View attachment 68554View attachment 68555
My son's name, in Chinese it means "happy like a running river", but I heard that it's more like a girl's name in English
View attachment 68553

looks great!

 

[Ted. Wu]

I finished this painting work with nitrocellulose lacquer in March and finished the assembly in April. Now is June, the finish has started to develop a lot of fine cracking on its own, along with some circular swirl marks that seem to follow the same motion I used during wet sanding and polishing.

After doing some research, I suspect the main issue may be that the nitro was still too thick and not fully settled when I started sanding and buffing. A lot of tutorials suggest spraying \around 14 coats, but in my case I only sprayed 7 coats of clear and it may still have been too much. Looking back, 2–3 thinner clear coats might have been enough, at least for the kind of finish I wanted.

Another lesson learned: be very careful with guitar stands and nitro finishes. The lacquer at the headstock contact point melted where it touched the stand.

That being said, if you are going for a vintage look, it is not necessarily the worst thing in the world — the guitar honestly looks like something from the 1950s now